“The way I found Daniel is – I’d seen a film called Finding Neverland, with Johnny Depp and young Freddie Highmore; I really liked Freddie. I thought ‘there’s an up and coming young actor who could bring a lot of heart to the film. His mother is a big agent in London, she read the screenplay and loved it. She became very interested in the project. Then, as months progressed, she said ‘How would you feel about having Daniel Radcliffe in your picture?’, and I was a bit surprised – he wasn’t my first choice, but only because I didn’t think we had a chance – but I agreed to let her pass the script onto [Radcliffe’s] parents. They then passed it onto him. Within 48 hours there was a response back saying ‘they all love it!’. So for a while there we had both Freddie Highmore and Daniel Radcliffe.”

“We certainly didn’t have any money. He [Dan] just loved the product – and he wanted to do something between Harry Potter’s 4 and 5. What he liked about the film was its ‘simplicity’. And he was fantastic! His parents came out with him – his father stayed most of the time, as his chaperone – as did a tutor, because he was in a very important year school-wise back home, but he was wonderful; he got on so well with the other boys.”